


alternatives

by bysine



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018), Inception (2010)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Crossover, F/M, Gen, The premise was what I wanted to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 03:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19455286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bysine/pseuds/bysine
Summary: In which Julia Montague isn’t dead, saves the day, seizes power and in which David Budd is recruited for dreamshare.





	alternatives

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this as a WIP amnesty because I don't think I'll ever get round to writing it again :(( Richard Madden's face could only get me this far, and I am sorry for that!!
> 
> Huge thanks as always to forochel for the encouragement <3

After the bomb, after _Home Secretary Julia Montague makes a miraculous recovery_ , after David unravels Craddock and Luke Aikens and Nadia, Julia says, “Will you do this for me,” and hands him a card. Gives him that tender look that's not quite a smile, that she's as good as weaponised because David cannot do anything except nod. 

She kisses him then; says, “This isn't goodbye.”

“It feels like it,” David says.

“I want you by my side,” Julia tells him. But she’s always wanted a great many things and now, after escaping death a second time, there is a terrible clarity to her ambition. _Everything_ , David thinks. He is merely caught in the undertow.

The card doesn't say much -- just a phone number and a name.

David picks up Charlie and Ella from school, takes them out for a surprise dinner, bundles them back home to Vicky. Tells her, “I might be away for a while.”

“Where are you going?” Vicky asks, sounding like she's torn between wanting to know and not. 

“I don't know,” David says honestly.

“You don't know,” Vicky repeats. He's getting used to that look on her face now, the one where she doesn't believe him.

He returns to his flat, sweeps it for bugs more out of habit, now, than anything else. Then he pulls out the card and dials the number.

There's no answer. He puts the card away and goes to sleep with the television on, and only wakes up shouting once.

The next day a black van pulls up next to him while he's walking to the shops. The door slides open.

“Well, aren't you coming?” says a person inside. 

David glances around, hopes he's not being monumentally stupid, and climbs in. 

Caucasian male, early forties, could be five foot eight but it’s hard to tell properly, seated as he is. 

“Mr Charles,” says David.

The man waves a hand dismissively. “That's a fake name,” he says. “Call me Eames.”

\---

“So,” says Eames. “Dreamshare. You've heard of it at least.”

A rumour of a rumour, back in Helmand. An experimental unit that could walk through dreams, pillage your mind while you were asleep. “Aye. Didn't think it was real.”

Eames leans back, looks appraisingly at David. “And she didn't tell you anything more.”

David says nothing.

“Typical Julia,” Eames says, studies David's face as if to catch his reaction at the sound of her name. Reaches for his beer. 

They're in a pub. David takes a sip of the beer in his hand and realises for the first time that he's thirsty. “She wants us to investigate something?”

Eames shrugs. “In a manner of speaking.”

The way that Eames scans the room and has chosen a booth in the pub with the clearest sightlines suggests ex-military or police. He's got a vaguely posh accent that seems deliberately unplaceable. If David didn't know better he'd say intelligence service, but he does know better. So he says, “Private detective, then?”

“Not quite,” Eames replies. He checks his watch.

David swallows another mouthful of beer and looks around. Tries to ignore the strange sense of _not quite right_ that keeps creeping up on him. He can't put his finger on it. Something about the dimensions of the pub, its ceilings a little too high. The grain of the wood under his finger that feels a little too smooth. The way some of the other people in the pub seem to dart glances over at Eames and David every now and then. 

There's something wrong.

A dozen and a half heads swing around to look at them.

Eames checks his watch. “Interesting.”

People are standing up from their seats now, staring intently at Eames and David.

“What the fuck is going on,” David says. Glances for the nearest exit just as that door bursts open and four more people stream in.

The crowd is striding towards them, reaching for Eames first and dragging him away, reaching for David who shouts and tries to fight them off but there are too many --

He wakes up in a warehouse to find a woman removing an IV line from his arm. He jerks away from her. 

Eames leans against a table, taps a pen against his chin. Says: “You'll do.”

\---

_Dreamshare is illegal_ , is what he thinks he'll say when Julia calls. Or, _why exactly have you sent me here_. What he probably won't say, though he thinks it often, is: _I miss you_. He imagines the look on her face when she hears that, the quiet gratification, like she's hoarding it away to properly feel what she's feeling when there's no one else there to see it. 

Julia doesn't call. The phone lines aren't safe, is what she'll probably say. The news is filled with reports of her imminent return to office.

David goes to the warehouse each day and gets shot in the head by Eames. 

“You’re a quick study,” Eames says.

“You’re a bloody bastard,” David replies, reaching up reflexively to touch fingers to his forehead, to see them come away dry. 

“Come, come, no need to be uncreative,” says Eames. “Now, what do you know about Penrose steps?” 

So David learns. He practices fitting mazes in his mind, reading the expressions on the projections’ faces to gauge how long he has before they turn on him. He masters the drop, the kick, the jump; pulls guns from the fold of his imagination. 

The rest of it is not so far from what he’s done before, is it; running an operation, pulling up dossiers, knowing comprehensively what they need for the job. He thinks back to that morning, under the sheets with Julia, they way she’d looked at him when she’d said _is that what you always wanted to do_. There’s a dreamlike quality to his memory of those moments, now. Perhaps even then she’d been weighing him, testing how far he’d be willing to go. 

Pretty fucking far, as it turns out, David thinks, tipping over the side of a building into consciousness. 

In the meantime, Julia ascends.


End file.
